MUSIC (LingalaPop): Incredible Yondo Sister's Mbuta Mutu

Incredible Yondo Sister is not so well known now outside the two Congos, as she once was. And even within them, her magnetic presence and appeal seem to have waned in recent years. Despite all that, she remains one of the very finest Congolese (nay, African) artistes, male or female, of any generation -- past and present. You just have to watch one of her video clips to know. 

Among her best are Perdue de Vue, Madi, Maweke, Mwana Kenta, Wapi Yo, and Mbuta Mutu. But you must also see her inspired avant-garde piece titled Duniya, which she sings in Swahili. It is the second song (which runs from 6:10 to 11:14 minutes) in the 8-piece retrospective published in 1992, a link to which I provide at the bottom of this page.

I choose to comment briefly here on only one of the above-mentioned songs: Mbuta Mutu (2015 version). The clip is, for me, a superb example of Yondo Sister's daring and absolutely absorbing artistry. In it, she dances with no restraint at all, as if possessed by the very words she sings and the very tunes her ears and lithe body attend to. She goes, in the end, totally wild here. Congo wild. She, the Great Rainforest Queen, rules a 'wilderness' world of funky sight and sound! If you haven't seen Yondo Sister, I dare say, you haven't seen anyone.

Click here to watch the Mbuta Mutu clip (2015 version)

I can confidently say, as I conclude, that every ear and every eye that Yondo Sister -- this '80s/'90s Girl, this female sapeur -- 'touched' with her voice, and her beguiling dance moves, surely none such remained ever the same. We are all the richer, who have heard her, and seen what she could do with her supple body; indeed, what magic became it. She is, and will forever be, at the very heart of #LingalaPop.

WATCH: A 1992 8-Clip Retrospective on Yondo Sister's Life as a Performing Artist

WATCH: A 2013 version of Yondo Sister's Mbuta Mutu

READ: Yondo Sister: A Biographical Sketch




NOTE: Much of the material in the second paragraph above first featured in my blog post titled LingalaPop, Volume 7.

"Fantastic", by Radio and Weasel, is a Fantastical Do

Fantastic, a 2012 single produced on clearly minimalist ideas, is simply the most fantastical that I've ever seen. There are no fancy or manufactured visual effects or tricks to embellish it. There's thus no similarity, along the lines that we saw more recently, with that mesmerizing production, King Kong Remix. It's all natural, and madly creative. 


Click to watch the Fantastic video


Bodies do here what only supple bodies can, and dance moves challenge belief and preloaded mind-pictures, and yet in truly avant-garde styles. Someone does a half-somersault and lands upside-down (staying put for seconds) -- head on the hard ground and legs up in the air -- without snapping his neck.

And then there's that lady we have seen in a couple of R+W tracks. Liters of milk poured and pouring down her mammary glands, 'willingly', and on to her belly button and places beyond. Allusion, perhaps(?), to an obscure ritual we know not of. But it's just as probable that this was simply the 'theatrical' concoction of one artiste's fertility idea. Or awesomely fertile mind.

The music is intense, from the first second to the last. So is all the dancing, and the synchronized toing and froing. The beat is magical, to the very last key. The voices are wonderfully primed for the happening, and are a distinct happening themselves. There is a thin story-line, and yet the story we have is thick with tantalizing memes. But nothing in it suggests that the characters played by R+W were in a fugitive mode akin to the imagery in their more recent offering -- "Done, Done". And they do get caught here, and loosely tied up. More "theater", then.


Click to read the Lyrics